The major coalition party, the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) met on Thursday evening and achieved significant progress on the issue of water management.
Havadis reported that the party agreed that an autonomous water administration board should be established with the participation of the municipalities and international tenders can be sought for the management of the water which is piped from Turkey by undersea pipeline.
Taking into consideration its own concerns, the CTP assembly also decided on the establishment of a technical water committee. The members of the assembly agreed that they are close to reaching a consensus on the issue. The technical committee will work to resolve the dispute of water management with Turkey. The prevailing mood of the CTP was inclined towards offering support to any kind of initiative undertaken by the government on this issue, during the assembly, the paper writes.
After reaching a consensus within the CTP, attention is now turned to the minority coalition party – UBP. The UBP met on Friday to evaluate the CTP’s decisions.
Meanwhile, writing in his daily column in Turkish Cypriot daily Afrika on Friday, Mehmet Levent noted that the water management dispute is heading in favour of Turkey. He writes that Turkey had disregarded the fact that the local municipalities had formed its own administrative company – BESKI. Turkey, he says has taken the position that managing the water is a serious job and that they were not competent enough to do it.
“Turkey demanded that it should manage water distribution by methods determined by Turkey”, he says. Levent points out that Turkey has insisted that the land through which the water passes should belong to Ankara and it has asked for the right to control the underground water resources of the island.
Levent reports the following: “There is no agreement between the CTP and the UBP on the water issue. The UBP has in any case been submissive [towards Turkey] from the very beginning. The government wing of the CTP says one thing, while the party assembly says another thing. There were some who were even foreseeing elections in the end”.
Havadis, Afrika
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